Day 17 6/7/19 Cardiff (Whitchurch)

First job today, find where Maritta is working next week, after a few missed intersections we eventually found it, should be better the second time.

Then we went to visit the Welsh National Museum of History at St Fagans Castle. This is a huge open air museum depicting Welsh life through the ages, free entry, 5 pound to park the car..

It was opened in 1946 and has continues to grow with new buildings being added all the time. It currently comprises of approximately 60 buildings. Some of these are original to the farm but the majority are original buildings, dismantled and reconstructed on the site. Some have been built in the original manner from historical records, such as the Medieval round house. The site includes a number of traditional trades such as clog maker, blacksmith, miller etc, which may or may not be working depending on the day.

We spent about 5 hours there and only explored about ½ of it, The Castle itself was closed for a wedding, hopefully we will be able to get back and look at this and the other buildings we missed. According to Maritta’s watch we did about 8,000 steps.

Historic Mileage Post

Pig sty (round stone building), built round so there where no corners for pigs to dig in, pigs were (and still are) very important to the profitability of the farm

Maritta trying to negotiate right-of-way with the farm geese, She did succeed but I took the cowards way on the other side of the stone fence

Farm was obviously well to do.

Pig in tray protecting its dinner

Reconstructed Medieval round house, built using clues from one excavated on a remote island at the top of Wales

The three armed sigil on the inside wall of the round house is very similar to the Isle of Mann symbol, apparently these types of depictions are found all over the British Isles, 3 was a very important number.

Inside the round house

Medieval Prince, Llys Llewelyn Hall (Anglesey), a very important Welsh ruler around 1280.

Outside St Teilo's Church

Inside the church

Gorse Mill (Gorse was crushed for stock feed)

Saw Mill

Tannery, bet this was a pleasant place in the day

Look closely at the menu, don't know what the second bottom item is but it can't be good.

Oakdale workers Institute

You can catch the "train" to get around, 60p each, not sure if that's per trip or for the day.

Inside pre-fabricated home from the late 40's (see below)

Pre-fabricated home from 1947, due to the housing shortage after the war they were built from Aluminium in 4 sections in the factories used to build planes during the war, transported to the site and joined together.

Kitchen

Typical garden of the time, you can clearly see the joins between the four sections

Hendre-wen Barn

Interesting old tree

Near the bird hide, Maritta saw a few small birds but I had run off with the camera, they do cheat as there are a couple of seed feeder in front of the hide.